Considering Keynes
Associate Professor Andrew McGowan, Professor John Poynter and Professor Don Markwell (L-R)
On 1 April, as world leaders gathered in London for the G20 summit on the global recession, a forum of economists, students and others at Trinity College considered the current relevance of the Cambridge economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946). Initiated by Trinity’s Bruce McComish Fund for Economic History, the seminar considered Keynes as an economic theorist, problem-solver, institution-builder, historian of economic thought, social philosopher, financier, and celebrity.
Former Warden of Trinity, Professor Don Markwell, author of John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace (Oxford, 2006), argued that Keynes’s key international lessons are the importance of international coordination of stimulus policies, of strong international economic institutions (such as the IMF), of maintaining an open trading system, and of combating the economic causes of international conflict.
Gazing down on the forum was Roy De Maistre's portrait of John Maynard Keynes, kindly lent by the Stoneman Foundation
Dr Alex Millmow regretted the resistance to Keynesian measures, and Dr Peter Jonson argued that if Keynes were alive today he would focus on stimulus to supply rather than demand, including through encouraging research, development and the ‘animal spirits’ of entrepreneurship. Dr Bruce Littleboy advocated new fiscal rules in Australia; Professor Ian McDonald argued that Keynes would today place strong emphasis on psychology, including surrounding wages; and Nobel laureate Sir James Mirrlees argued that Keynes’s fundamental insight was on the importance of aggregate demand. The papers are at http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5672